Hearts of Gold by Catrin Collier Read Free Book Online

It’s murder having five.’
    Bethan dropped the subject. Laura was one of eleven, six girls and five boys. But she’d never gone as short as some of the other Graig children. Their parents were Italian immigrants and their father had progressed from selling ice cream from a handcart in Market Square, to owning two cafes. One in the centre of Pontypridd, which Laura’s eldest brother Giacomo ‘Ronnie’ Ronconi ran, and one in High Street, just below the hospital. All the Ronconi children were well-fed and well-dressed, and whatever money they earned, they kept. Unlike Bethan. Her father along with other miners in the Maritime had been put on a three-day working week at the end of last year and, as her mother was so fond of pointing out, no one could keep a family on what he brought home. He did his best. Like every short-timer and unemployed man in Pontypridd, he tried to-pick up casual work on the days he was free.
    There was a fair amount of it – the rag and bone carts, the market traders, the brewery yards. The problem was that for every hour’s work there were a hundred or more men prepared to undercut their fellows and boys like Eddie were often more successful than their fathers, for the simple reason that they were prepared to work for less money.
    Bethan earned twenty-five shillings a week. ‘If (she couldn’t even bring herself to think when) she qualified, it would go up to thirty-five. Good money by any standard. She already gave her mother fifteen shillings a week, and chipped in to help with expenses whenever she could. She knew her father found it difficult to live with the notion that she was contributing more than him to the family kitty, but neither of them had any choice. The mortgage had to be paid; and the expense of keeping the boys, not to mention Maud, grew heavier with their increasing sizes.
    On top of the cost of food, extra coal to supplement Evan’s reduced collier’s ration, gas and electricity, there was the question of the boys’ clothes. Bethan had been saving for months to buy both of them decent suits and overcoats. She’d managed to kit Haydn out on Wilf Horton’s second-hand stall on the market, but only because he was into a man’s size, and men who were out of work were queuing up to sell their good clothes.
    Boys’ clothes were different. Every family in Pontypridd was anxious to buy their sons good outfits in the hope that smart clothes would impress a prospective employer.
    Poor Eddie was walking around in an overcoat that didn’t cover his forearms, and trousers that had been twice turned. She had twenty-five shillings hidden in a wooden jewellery box that Haydn had made her in the school woodwork class, but decent overcoats Eddie’s size started at two guineas in Leslie’s stores, the cheapest shop in town. And that was without a suit.
    ‘You’re quiet,’ Laura observed as they passed the yellow lit windows of Harry Griffiths’ grocery shop.
    ‘I was thinking about Eddie. He needs a good overcoat in this weather. The one he’s wearing is miles too small for him.’
    ‘Didn’t you see the Observer on Saturday? There’s a sale on in Wien’s. All ladies’ blouses and jumpers are down to a shilling from four and eleven, and youths’ lined overcoats down from twenty-nine and six to four and eleven. Sale starts this morning.
    Our Mam intends to be first in the queue.’
    ‘Youths’ sizes will probably be too small for our Eddie.’
    ‘Our Joe wears youth sizes and he’s bigger than your Eddie.’
    ‘Oh if only I wasn’t working,’ Bethan complained in exasperation.
    ‘You could slip out lunch time.’
    ‘We’re not supposed to leave the hospital.’
    ‘Goody two-shoes. I’ll go for you if you like.’
    ‘So you can get caught instead of me? Do you think they’ll have anything left tonight?’ Bethan demanded anxiously.
    ‘They might and they might not. Isn’t that your Haydn?’
    Bethan looked down the hill and saw her brother climbing, cap